Well, samclem, I’m glad you’ve somewhat backed off and are now going with:
I’m glad because I was worried about the Chicago Reader joining Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco, and Google (and possibly others) in this practice, characterized by Democrat Tom Lantos as “abhorrent actions in China [which] are a disgrace”. Because it certainly sounded like it:
You then say:
Well, if it’s not board policy, and it’s not due to a position made by the Chicago reader, then it sure looks like you are taking such a position.
Maybe I’m slow. Please spell it out to me exactly why you removed the link and closed the thread.
I think the mods and the admins are just waiting for this thread to eventually die. It’s a shame that samclem won’t just admit that his judgement in this particular case was severly flawed and just reverse his decision. That would be the classy thing to do.
Q.E.D. was correct, by the way, I went to the About this Message Board forum because noone besides the mod who made the incorrect, horrible, morally indefensible decision was responding. I was hoping I could get some insight as to why the admins supposedly think supporting Chinese law was a good idea. And I have to assume that they think that since the thread is still closed, and they have the authority to overrule a mod’s action.
Not to speak for Sam, but I don’t see it as cut and dry as my fellow posters.
When you run a country of over 1 billion people, hiring 100 internet censors is no big deal. If they have 1/2 of a brain, they will have a List of the top 100 bulletin boards. The SDMB would be on such a list. Should the SDMB piss them off, it will be firewalled off from China, compromising free expression in the end.
That would be a bad outcome. Sound decision-making weighs the pros, cons and alternatives of a given policy.
1b. There’s a simple alternative: let the freedom fighters find this information elsewhere, at a lower profile location. Shocking Newsflash: there are websites other than the Straight Dope Message Board.
Contrary to what Miller implied, a paternalistic stance is entirely defendable when dealing with situations where carelessness could get one in trouble with tyrannical authorities. It’s pretty easy to click a link in GQ without thinking. It’s fairly inevitable that this will occur, given exposure to a sufficiently large vulnerable population. Removing such a possibility is not unwarrented.
But gosh, doesn’t this make the Board complicit in tyranny? Not really. Evil that is worth fighting is worth fighting strategically: the alternative is self-indulgent posturing.
Look, I’m not saying that there’s no debate here. I’m saying that those disagreeing with samclem need to address the points above.
While I appreciate all of the well-reasoned arguments against my closing the thread and my position, it will stay closed. I’m sorry that I haven’t been around more to respond. My everyday life has been rather full lately.
Measure for Measure hi lights some of my reasoning.
Tom Lantos, Democrat from California, is probably much more to the right on most issues than I. On this issue he seems to be the leader of the band against China. And that’s fine. But that has little to do with my decision.
If the Straight Dope Message Board were the only place that someone in China could get this information, then that would help me to change my mind. But that isn’t the case.
If my memory is correct, I think that link that I broke contained not only information about how you MIGHT get around China’s firewall, but how you might circumvent various “filters” in any country including the US. If my memory is wrong, then that wouldn’t come into play as a reason. But in my haste I thought it contained information that would be useable in the US. Please don’t think that this is just my grasping at straws, as I truly had that in my mind while closing the thread and quashing the link.
Late for me as I have to be up by 6am. I’ll try to come back tomorrow.
This is a very important issue to me, and it seems to be an important issue to others. I have friendships with two Chinese people, these friendships have developed over the course of six years. Therefore, I might have more of an emotional investment regarding this issue than others. However, “because I said so, and it felt like the thing to do” are not sound reasons for closing a thread, especially when it involves something of this magnitude. The American companies that went along with the Chinese goverment’s immoral policies are bastards. Why make a little company in the Midwest complicit in this crap also?
I understand your reasoning. I really do. However, I can not agree with it at all.
This is, IMNSHO, the same reasoning that allows apartment dwellers in a major metropolitan area to look down at the street where a woman is being attacked. They watched. They listened to her screams. And did nothing.
“Oh, this is terrible. Someone should do something. Someone should call the police. But not me. I don’t want to get involved. I don’t want to be the one to personally put my ass in the spotlight.”
Someone, somewhere, sometime, has to put their mouth where their morals lie. Eventually, someone has to actually take a stand and do something, even if it appears risky. Eventually, someone has to take the personal responsibility and take up the fight against tyranny through personal action.
Furthermore, when someone does this (assuming it is done legitimately) they should not have to face being called down by those who fear to take that moral stand. Paternalistic stances be damned. And who the hell is worried about “… get[ting] one in trouble with tyrannical authorities …”?
So what if Chinese censors firewall this message board. This issue is larger than the SDMB. It is larger than The Reader. As you so aptly point out, there are other sources of information. There are others to take up the fight if it should happen that we get taken out in the first wave. But first we need to take the step of being a part of that first wave. Someone had to be the one to put those first two boots on Omaha Beach.
That may not be very “strategic” to your way of thinking. Putting up a simple link on an intergnat* message board may not be much. It may be nothing more than a shot over the bow – yet, I would rather that we, as a community, take that first ‘shot over the bow’ than sit by in our comfortable homes and cry, “Oh, how terrible it must be …”
They ain’t numbered – but as a war era ‘freedom fighter’, that is how I would address your very debatable points. (And I’m reasonably certain that I’m not alone in these beliefs.)
samclem, Please, count the yeahs and nays. Consult whom ever you please.
Has anybody, anyone at all, who thinks samclem and the Reader should have kept the information available on the SDMB for moral reasons taken steps to host the information on their own, or paid the approximate $5/month hosting fee to one of the many available hosting services to do it for them? I’m not sniping, I’m just curious if some of these strong sentiments have translated into personal action.
This is probably the best reason so far for removing the thread. The problem with it is, how far are we going to extend it? I suspect that any significant questioning or criticism of the Chinese government will also land us on their ban list, even if we’re not specifically discussing how to circumvent Chinese law. Obviously, we’re not going to ban all discussion of Chinese politics, so it seems likely that, if the SDMB ever comes to the attention of Chinese censors at all, we’re going to be blocked by them. Why not disseminate information on how to get around the firewall while we can still get to those who are most in need of the information?
The other argument against here is that, if we self-censor in order to remain accesible to people in China, the value of the board as an outlet for free expression is automatically debased. If we don’t post anything here except what can be learned at any other Chinese-legal website, then we’re not really providing anything particularly special, are we?
I don’t think this is really a significant risk. For starters, although China has a huge population, how much of that population is a) literate in English and b) has access to the internet in the first place? It’s a much smaller pool. Plus, the nature of the information makes it rather unlikely to crop up in a context where it’s not abundantly clear exactly what’s being discussed. If the admin is really concerned about this, they could institute a two-click rule similar to the one we have for linking to pictures containing nudity, but I don’t think it’s necessary or desirable.
Incidentally, thanks for actually providing some reasoning for Waverly’s “arguments.” Does he pay you for the service, or are you working pro bono?
I agree with you here. It’s not the Reader’s responsibility to fight tyranny around the globe, and refusing to participate is not the same as tacitly condoning it. But as it would cost them almost nothing, and put them at no risk whatsoever, it’s a little disappointing that they’ve made the call they’ve made.
Sure, but someone needed to actually make them before they could be rebutted. Thanks for making the effort, even if I don’t find your arguments particularly persuasive.
Yes please do. Even if you intentionally left the thread open (and link intact) long enough for the person in China to get it, before taking the official stance of the board, just think of what that official stance is - The Straight Dope does not care about opressed people.
I’m sorry, Miller. I’ve reconsidered and now agree with everything you have said. Will you please stop hurting my feelings with your biting wit and crushing sarcasm?
Oh, by the way, there are over 24MM English-speaking, college educated Chinese. Actually there were that many in 2004, there will be more today. That’s probably a good estimate for the “smaller pool”. This is about the same small pool of English-speakers, of any age or education, in Canada. You asked the question, and as someone who desperately seeks your approval, I looked it up.
Apologies if it’s been linked before and I missed it. ‘Penalties’ for foreign companies all seem to revolve around implied restriction from the Chinese market. That’s why Cisco, Sun, and others provide filtering solutions without regard to how they are employed. It’s easy to see how this applies to hardware and software companies, but it also extends to infrastructure services, eg ISP’s. I don’t know the Reader’s relationship to its ISP, but this would be the only business related risk I can envision.
No point here, other than to provide the information.
I’ll have to say it more plainly–I asked no one in a position of authority at the Reader or on the SDMB as to what I should do before I did it. I just did it on my own. But it was my judgement that my employers would have wanted me to close the thread and delete the link. But just MY judgement.
As to trying to take my action and construe it to mean “The Straight Dope does not care about opressed people,” well, that just doesn’t fly. It was an isolated incident.
I’ve actually considered taking my uneaten food from my plate at dinner and shipping it to China.
Um, no. I don’t think this is an example of the bystander effect. Quite the opposite actually: samclem doesn’t want Chinese authorities to capture a careless clicker.
Apparently not. If something is worth doing, something effective and well thought out is worth doing.
Like, for example, supporting the development and implemention of Psiphon, a software tool being written by University of Toronto researchers. That would be the moral equivalent of “calling the cops”, as opposed to, “posturing to ones friends”.
This is revealing. Lucy isn’t really interested in helping the Chinese. If she was, she would be aware that this is not a first, second or even third wave assault on Chinese tyranny. She’s interested in the struggle. She’s interested in doing something -anything- so that she can feel good about herself.
There are lots of activists on the net who want to stick it to the Chinese authorities: I would recommend that the keyboard brigade look into them. I’ve provided one lead. There are rather fewer resources quite like GQ. To withdraw this from the 1 billion + in China for feel-good reasons would be irresponsible and enable ignorance – no trivial matter in a country run by censors.
I made these arguments earlier, in the post that samclem joked about.
Reason #3 was pre-emptive.
Smaller groups are more vulnerable to police action than larger groups. Furthermore, you just seem to have demonstrated that the benefits of such a link are pretty small. I’d argue that the benefits of GQ are proportionately larger by orders and orders of magnitude.
We won’t, I hope. Samclem has made it clear that this was his call and not official SDMB policy.
Oh, please. That’s a hell of an extrapolation, and you know it.
This issue is VERY slippery-slope.
Here’s my $.02:
I agree with samclem, and his decision. I’m not eloquent enough to list my reasoning, other than say that we have no RIGHT to enforce our morality on another country (as a side note, this is also why I disagree with the idea of forcing certain Middle East countries to adopt a democratic approach. What’s next? England?).
Other people have summed up my thoughts better than I could.
Of course we don’t. Good thing that’s not what we’re talking about, isn’t it? No one here wants to force our morality on the Chinese. We just want to give Chinese citizens the chance to decide their own morality. Instead, we’re going to help the Chinese government force its own idea of moraility of its citizens? Fuck that.
